Referring to FIG. 1, a block diagram of a serial-ATA frame 10 is shown. The serial advanced technology attachment (Serial-ATA or SATA) specification revision 1.0 (published Aug. 29, 2001), which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety, defines a serial communication protocol for communicating with storage devices. In Serial-ATA, information packets are sent using one or more frames 10. The frame 10 includes a start of frame (SOF) delimiter 12, a payload 14, a CRC delimiter 16 and an end of frame (EOF) delimiter 18. The payload 14 contains information organized according to a predefined file information structure (FIS). The FIS of the payload 14 includes a byte 20 that contains a value representing a type parameter of the FIS.
The Serial-ATA specification defines 14 FIS types. The defined FIS types may be summarized as in the following TABLE 1.
TABLE 1FIS Type Field (hex)Definition27hRegister - Host to Device FIS34hRegister - Device to Host FIS39hDMA Activate FIS41hDMA Setup FIS46hData FIS58hBIST Activate FIS5FhPIO Setup FISAlhSet Device Bits FISA6hUndefinedB8hUndefinedBFhUndefinedC7hUndefinedD4hUndefinedD9hUndefinedSince there are only 14 defined types and only six of the types are not currently used, the amount of future expansion is limited.